Russians take Rădăuți

On 21 June 1916 the Russian war communiqué announced that troops continuing the pursuit on the extreme left wing, in Bukovina, had taken Rădăuți and captured more prisoners and three machine guns. The British chronology of the war and The Times record the capture of the town under exactly that date. According to the Austrian official history, Terek Cossacks had already passed through Rădăuți, heading south, on 20 June. There was no battle for the town. Rădăuți lay on the route of the retreating Austro-Hungarian troops and fell without a fight three days after the Russians retook Czernowitz.

Bogdan’s town

Rădăuți, Radautz in German and Radowce in Polish, lay in southern Bukovina, about 50 kilometres south of Czernowitz and a dozen or so kilometres from the Romanian border. According to the 1910 census it had about 16,500 inhabitants. It was a town with a long history. In the 14th century the first hospodar of Moldavia, Bogdan I, settled here and founded the church of St Nicholas, today the Bogdana Monastery, the necropolis of the first rulers of Moldavia. Under Austrian rule many Germans settled here, and the large Jewish community made up nearly a third of the inhabitants. Rădăuți was also famous for its huge stud farm, the largest state stud in Austria, where Hucul horses among others were bred.

It was not the first time the war had reached the town. In the autumn of 1914 the Russians occupied most of Bukovina, and the Austrians recovered Rădăuți in February 1915, during the offensive that also brought them Czernowitz.

Pursuit to the south

After the fall of Czernowitz General Platon Lechitsky, commander of the Russian Ninth Army, formed a pursuit group under General Mikhail Promtov: the 82nd Infantry Division, the 103rd Reserve Division and III Cavalry Corps. The Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander, General Mikhail Alekseyev, suggested pushing the Austrians east onto Romanian territory, where they would be interned. Lechitsky preferred to take the whole of Bukovina and sent Promtov south, with the cavalry as far as the Carpathian passes and with the infantry to the river Suceava.

General Korda’s Austro-Hungarian XI Corps tried to make a stand on the Siret, but on the afternoon of 19 June Russian cavalry crossed the river at Ropcza and Karapcziu and broke into the thin lines of the 10th Infantry Brigade. Korda had no reserves and that same day ordered a further retreat, towards the mountains beyond the Suceava. Lieutenant-Colonel Papp’s brigade, the furthest east, made up of Landsturm battalions, crossed the Siret right by the Romanian border, pursued by the 1st Terek Cossack Division. On 20 June the Cossacks passed through Rădăuți further south, and the Russian infantry was approaching Hadikfalva and Czudyn. The command of the Austro-Hungarian Seventh Army reckoned that XI Corps and Brudermann’s cavalry corps together had 32,000 rifles against three Russian corps.

Illusions and facts

In these days the Allied press painted the fate of Bukovina in garish colours. London newspapers reported that only a miracle would save Pflanzer-Baltin’s army, and from Rome came even the news that the general himself, with part of his troops, had been surrounded in the corner of the border near the town of Siret. Nothing of the kind happened. Korda’s troops were retreating in disorder and suffering heavy losses, but they did not let themselves be encircled. Papp’s brigade crossed the Suceava and fell back further, towards Gura Humorului and the Moldova valley.

The capture of Rădăuți gave the Russians an important road junction in southern Bukovina and, together with nearby Hadikfalva, a large part of the Bukovinian railway network as well. In Vienna and Budapest there was growing fear that the Russians would reach the passes leading to Transylvania and that Romania would take this as a signal to enter the war. In the following days the Cossacks reached Gura Humorului and Kimpolung, and the Central Powers recovered most of Bukovina only in the summer of 1917.